Thursday, August 23, 2007

Close Encounters of the Insurance Kind, Part 17,083

All of my interactions with my insurance company have involved the following steps:

1. Ask them to pay something.2. Hold breath.3. Let breath go because 2 months have passed.4. Procrastinate and avoid calling to hear potential bad news.5. Finally suck it up and call to find out that something just got approved yesterday.6. Repeat with next item (wheelchair, physical therapy, X-rays etc)

I was on step 4 of two items simultaneously (PT and anaesthesia) when I received an updated bill from Dr. Buly's office. Insurance had already paid for 70% of his bill and I was sort of hoping we could all look the other way about the rest... right? What's a few thousand dollars between friends... except a few thousand dollars...

The good news is that he has reduced the rest of his fee, the medium news is there's still a bit to pay.

Somehow this motivated me to find out exactly how much of everything else I still need to pay for, dammit... and got all ready to battle with whomever picked up the phone at the insurance company as to why they were only covering 1/3 of the anaesthesia when the plan clearly states 100%, etc... and got the nicest man on the phone who said the full anaesthesia was paid for, and extra PT was approved, and hooray!

Sometimes, occasionally, the system works. I know I'm supposed to rant and rave about how shitty health insurance is in this country, and believe me I'm not a fan, but I think I got lulled into happy-land by the words "It's all been approved."